A visiting scholar and eight U-M lecturers and tenure-track faculty have been awarded 2026 summer fellowships at the Institute for the Humanities. During the 2026-27 academic year, a cohort of eight U-M faculty members, a visiting scholar and eight graduate students will hold fellowships at the institute.

The two cohorts will take up residence at the institute during their fellowship periods, forming an intellectual community while pursuing original research and participating in regular, cross-disciplinary fellows’ seminars. Fellowship recipients represent diverse disciplines, this year including art and design, comparative literature, disability studies, English, history, Judaic studies, musicology, sociology, and women’s and gender studies. 

The Institute for the Humanities supports work that:

• Examines humanities traditions across space and time.
• Strengthens connections among the humanities, the arts and disciplines across the university.
• Brings the humanities to public life. 

Each year it provides fellowships for U-M faculty, graduate students and visiting scholars who work on scholarly and artistic projects. 

In addition to its fellowship program, the institute hosts a public humanities internship program and a robust schedule of public and scholarly events, including lectures, workshops, and discussions. The Institute for the Humanities Gallery — a fully curated, vibrant exhibition space — regularly features artists whose work explores pressing social issues.

Since its inauguration in 1987, the institute has awarded fellowships to more than 400 Michigan faculty, graduate students, and visiting scholars. 

The fellows and the topics of their research projects are:

Summer 2026 Fellows

Sigrid Anderson, librarian, disability studies and adjunct lecturer in American culture, LSA

“‘Entirely in the Hands of the Female’: Plausible Deniability and the Nineteenth-Century Contraceptive Underground”

Andrea Gondos, Stuart B. and Barbara Padnos Professor of Jewish Thought, assistant professor of Judaic studies, LSA

“Jewish Magic, Gender, and the Body in Premodern East-Central Europe”

Lauren Gwin, lecturer II of English, LSA

“Swamp Land: A Personal History of Place”

Nooshin Hakim, assistant professor of art & design, Penny W. Stamps School of Art & Design

“When the Ground Gives Way”

Raevin Jimenez, assistant professor of history, LSA

“Expanse: Historical Imagination in Africa’s Distant Past”

Karyn Lacy, associate professor of sociology, and of Afroamerican and African studies, LSA

“Reproducing Black Middle-Class Culture”

Aaron Turner, assistant professor of art & design, Stamps School

“Seen, of Light and Legacy”

Mariya Zilberman, lecturer II of English language and literature, LSA

Poetry collection that explores questions of belonging and bifurcation

2026-27 Faculty Fellows

Tina Bawden, George H. and Ilene H. Forsyth Professor and assistant professor of history of art, LSA

Hunting Family Faculty Fellow

“Topologies of the Codex”

Demet Bolat, sociologist and feminist scholar

William and Sally Searle Research Fellow

“Examination of the political, institutional, and epistemological effects of anti-genderism on academia in Turkey”

Aaron Coleman, assistant professor of English and comparative literature, LSA

Charles P. Brauer Faculty Fellow

“Mapmaker Scours a Border: Experiments in Afrodiasporic Translation”

Anna Freidin, associate professor of history, LSA

John Rich Faculty Fellow

“Empire of Bread: Food and Community in Ancient Rome”

Jonathan Gomez, assistant professor of music, SMTD

Richard and Lillian Ives Faculty Fellow

“The Way We Play: Sounding Black American History and Musical Identity”

Daniel Hack, professor of English language and literature, LSA

Steelcase Faculty Fellow

“Novel Meanings: Fiction and the Rise of Meaningfulness”

Anna Müller, professor of history, UM-Dearborn

Norman Freehling Visiting Faculty Fellow

“Knowledge Against Confinement: A Transnational History of Prisons as Spaces of Learning”

Carina Ray, A.M. and H.P. Bentley Professor of History, associate professor of history, LSA

Helmut F. Stern Faculty Fellow

“(Im)Pressing Blackness: Race in Print Across Ghana’s Long Twentieth Century”

Seda Saluk, assistant professor of women’s and gender studies, LSA

Hunting Family Faculty Fellow

“Monitoring Pregnancies: Reproduction, Health, and Surveillance Paternalism in Turkey”

2026-27 Graduate Fellows

Arianna Afsari, comparative literature 

James A. Winn Graduate Fellow

“Toward a Third Poetry: Notes on the Intimacies of Poetry and Anticolonial Militancy across Argentina and Iran”

Jasmine Ehrhardt, American culture

David and Mary Hunting Graduate Fellow

“Making the High-Tech Prison: Media, Infrastructure, and Counter-Narratives of the Digital”

Dora Gao, ancient history

David and Mary Hunting Graduate Fellow

“Affects of Belonging: Religious Kinship in Ptolemaic Egypt”

Jay Hasper, political science

William and Sally Searle Graduate Fellow

“That We Live is Protest: A Conceptual History of Black Transgender Resistance”

Talitha Pam, anthropology, history

Richard and Lillian Ives Graduate Fellow

“Negotiating Boundaries: Exploring Insecurity, Identity, and Media Influence among Northern Nigerian Diasporic Communities”

José Enrique Solano del Castillo, anthropology

A. Bartlett Giamatti Graduate Fellow

“Negotiating with powerful sentient lands and mining corporations: science, Christianity and livelihood dependencies in Espinar, Peru”

Sarah Tsung, history of art

Sylvia ‘Duffy’ Engle Graduate Fellow

“Relational Geographies: Leo Valledor and Carlos Villa”

Fernando Valcheff-García, romance languages & literatures

Mary Fair Croushore Graduate Fellow

“Dissecting Carne: The Politics of Meat and Flesh in Contemporary Latin American Women’s Fiction”